A horizontal-chamber coking oven may comprise, as is well known, a multiplicity of parallel chambers which are spaced apart transversely from one another along the length of the coke oven battery, have pusher doors along one side of the coke oven, each registering with one of the chambers, and have outlet doors along the opposite side of the coke oven, each registering with one of the chambers.
The roof of the coke oven is provided with a plurality of filling openings for each coking chamber and a carriage can be successively disposed above these openings and can have hoppers communicating with the openings so that, when the openings are uncovered for a respective chamber, a charge of coal to be subjected to coking, may be filled into the respective chamber.
Coking procedes in accordance with the principles described at page 156 ff of the Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 10th Edition, U.S. Steel Co., Pittsburg, Pa. (1985).
As will be apparent from this work, when the charge in each chamber has been coked, the glowing mass can be pushed out by removing the doors along the opposite vertical walls of the coke oven or battery for the particular chamber, driving a pusher through the pusher opening and displacing the glowing coke into a car from the outlet opening.
The door can be replaced and the chamber recharged for a subsequent coking operation
It is known that the roof of a coke oven directly or in the region thereof tends to emit gases and may be so constructed and arranged as to enable contaminants to accumulate thereover. For this reason, a variety of cover seals, suction devices for the doors, riser-pipe suction devices and super structures have been provided to reduce emissions from the coke oven or to at least limit such emissions into the ambient atmosphere.
For example, it has been proposed to completely enclose the coke oven or coke oven battery in a single wall enclosure or housing, but this has proved to be problematic because it has been found to be difficult to control the climate in the enclosure and to regulate or minimize toxic or noxious component concentrations therein.
A particular problem arises when there is an interruption in the operation of the coke oven because of a failure and, for some reason, sudden and massive emissions erupt from the coke oven into the enclosure. In addition, failures in the riser pipe system for evacuating gases produced in the coke oven can also create serious emission problems which cannot be solved by systems for the total enclosure of the coke oven battery known heretofore.